Schaeuble did not want the IMF’s involvement in Greece

Before the tumultuous year of 2015, Greece actually came close to leaving the eurozone in 2012, following the election of Antonis Samaras as prime minister. Chancellor Angela Merkel was notably apprehensive about the New Democracy leader's pre-election campaign. 

Harold James, Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies at Princeton University, as well as professor of history and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, and the official historian of the International Monetary Fund), sheds light on this intriguing detail of the Greek debt crisis in an interview with Kathimerini.

In an early evaluation of Wolfgang Schaeuble's legacy, James regards the former German finance minister's position as consistent since the 1990s when he initially advocated for the creation of a core group of countries at the heart of the EU that would progress toward...